When I think of your mother, my grandmother, and what she would say and how she would act to the knowledge of my brother being a rapist, I find that I’d imagine her having a similar reaction to yours. First not surprised at all. Second expect me to let him be. Maybe become colder, distant, angry with me, but also warmer with him as he’s going through a rough time (now she knows what’s going on with him). Those were her defensive ways. I know deep down she didn’t like my brother (she often said so, bless her and her big mouth) and that comforts me a little. But she’d ask me to make peace and forgive. Nothing can be that bad. Family comes first.

I never knew her mother. I do remember my grandmother telling me she was very cold emotionally. That doesn’t make me feel safe.

If I think of your father’s mother (my great-grandmother), she’d have probably negated the issue, told me to zip it and never speak of it again. Her sons were her life. There were more important things. She thought herself strong for having survived by dissociating and washing her house from top to bottom every day as a way to face intense grief.

My father’s mother would maybe be different. She is after all bisexual, living a lesbian relationship. She may be different. She may take sides, I’m not sure she’d take mine though, that remains to be seen. She pushed away my father as far as she could, for having done less than my brother. But it wasn’t done to someone else, it was done to her. I am not sure what she would say, but I’m pretty sure she’d find a way to blame my father for it.

Her mother I did not know, I would like to think she’d take my side, given that she escaped a very violent man. She raised two children alone in the 1920´s but incest has a strange way of affecting people so I cannot be sure.

My great grand mother (my grandfather’s mother) survived the holocaust. I have absolutely no idea what she would say to all this but I know one thing, her strength and valor is in my blood.

But those three women are not your ancestors mom, they’re mine.

Your female ancestors are your mother (my grandmother), and my great-grand-mother on both sides. And those three women, it seems, would have done what you’re doing.

This makes you a pawn in the history of time.

Generations of women in your family who let men get their ways and did not have them face consequences simply because they are men and that in itself must be respected.

Women who outdid themselves “at home” (even if they have jobs themselves) so that men can sleep on the couch because their work is so very hard (true story, every single time).

Generations of women who did not talk of abuse, violence, sexism and rape, because those conversations are not lady like. They got frowned upon by their husbands for saying something about it (only men get to have opinions).

Generations of women who endured completely dissociated and called it strength.

Generations of women who bite their lips, clenched their jaws and did not speak up or run away.

Generations of women who idolized their sons and asked of their daughters to always be better, more disciplined, useful, efficient, quiet and naive.

Generations of women that you thought highly of, even if they all lied to you about how righteous and advantageous their position is.

You are one generation more, living under these rules that have destroyed my childhood.

I will not be the generation that keeps that going.

I will draw from other sources, I will build my feminism and knowledge elsewhere. You are no longer my ideal. Your mother and grandmothers neither.

As much as I love you all, your show of dissociated strength and unmet needs decimated my childhood in beliefs that this way was the only way to be a woman.

No more.

– Asther (17)